Memoirs of Lloyd Moss: 1910 - 1914
We thought our house was pretty nice. It was set back about 200 yards from the road and in front of it was a garden, then overgrown and neglected, or roses, crepe myrtle and other shrubs. The driveway, lined with cedar trees (JUNIPERUS Virginiana) as far as the garden, swung off to the left around the house to the barnyard. The double front door was exactly in the center of the house and was reached by a path from the driveway through the garden, and up a set of wide steps to the pillared, covered porch that ran across the entire width of the house. Wisteria grew up each pillar and along the edge of the porch roof and in early summer the vines were a mass of bloom that attracted hordes of bumblebees. (Father told us that the bumblebees with white faces wouldn't sting and I'm sure we startled a lot of people by catching bees without getting hurt - we just knew which ones were safe to play with).
Inside the broad front doors was a wide hall that ran straight through to a regular sized door that was never used. To the left was the master bedroom and to the right the parlor behind which , forming an ell, were the dining room and kitchen. About a third of the way down the hall, to the right, was a nice staircase that rose to a landing over the back door, turned left a few steps to the upper hall and a cross-over above the front door. There was a nice shiny bannister that was wonderful for sliding though we were continually told not to do so. Under the stairs was a big, walk-in closet. There were two bedrooms over the master bedroom, a bedroom over the parlor and, a few steps down, three small bedrooms over the dining room and kitchen. Those over the dining room were used for trunk storage, and the one over the kitchen for keeping dried vegetables, fruits and nuts, as well as seeds for the next year's planting.
A rough outside staircase arched down over the kitchen door and a rain barrel was kept at this corner. From there it was about twenty feet to the woodshed, and about the same distance to the ante-bellum kitchen, converted to a tool shop and previously mentioned. I can remember an itinerant barber stopping at the farm and we children sitting on an up-ended flour barrel to have our hair cut in front of the tool shed under a shade tree. We could see the trains going by from either the kitchen or dining room windows. Between the house and the track was an area that was vegetable garden and berry vines, and halfway over was a pit that once had had a glass greenhouse roof over it, but this had fallen in before we moved there. It must have been a nice thing for the farm at one time, but, of course, father had all he could do keeping up the rest of the place without that. The front flower garden must have been very pretty in earlier days and looking back, even after all this time, I can visualize how it must have looked as a formal southern flower garden with plenty of help to keep it in prime condition.
Among the highlights of our years in Williamsburg were the picnics on the James River. Mother would bake Cornish pasties the day before, and as soon as morning chores were done we were in the surrey and off down the Newport News Road. We went past farms and through woods to a right turnoff onto a smaller dirt road that wound around through even more interesting country with just a hint of rolling hills to make it look new to us children. When the road became just a pair of cart-tracks in the field we reached the edge of a woods where a few other wagons were drawn up with the horses unhitched and tethered under the trees. There was the scent of tidewater in the air, and locusts singing everywhere. We were nearly too excited to contain ourselves as father and mother parceled out things from the surrey for use to carry, and father led the way into a break in the woods and down a steep series of bullies that had once been a wagon road, known as the "wood chute". Perhaps timber had been carted down here for transportation on the river in earlier days.
It was a dark, jungly walk down from the meadow, but suddenly we came out into brilliant sunshine. There before us was the lovely beach with shells, and the gleaming river stretching almost as far as we could see - part of Hampton Roads that looked like the ocean to us children. The beach had trees growing right down into the sand so there was shade to the water's edge much of the time. To top it all off there was a very fine clear, cool spring at the base of a nice big cypress tree halfway out on the beach at this spot. A schooner had come aground here and the mast was leaning out over deep water. The older boys used to grasp the main halyard and climb up on the lee rail then swing way out over the river and drop off into the water. It looked like great fun to me, and I longed for the day when I learned to swim and would be big enough to do this too. All the beaches I've seen around the world lacked a lot when compared to this one. It was a thoroughly pretty place and seemed to have everything anyone could wish for - warm, clear water, shade, pretty shells, birds and locusts singing, and families playing together. It's no wonder we've never forgotten it. I suppose we had pasties at other times but the ones in those lunches out on James River beach tasted better than any I've had since those days.